Family Tree Talk: Don't you just love technology?

Thursday

Apr 25, 2013 at 5:11 PMApr 25, 2013 at 5:28 PM

Don’t you just hate it when your computer crashes? Well, that happened to me a few days ago. My laptop computer is no more. The motherboard is fried and can’t be repaired, according to the techies. I’m now in the market for a new laptop. Now I will probably have to go with Windows 8 and a bunch of new things I don’t understand. Fortunately the old desktop computer is still working (v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y, but working). I still use it for writing these articles and for lots of other things, so it gets used daily.

Jim Moses

Don’t you just hate it when your computer crashes? Well, that happened to me a few days ago. My laptop computer is no more. The motherboard is fried and can’t be repaired, according to the techies. I’m now in the market for a new laptop. Now I will probably have to go with Windows 8 and a bunch of new things I don’t understand. Fortunately the old desktop computer is still working (v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y, but working). I still use it for writing these articles and for lots of other things, so it gets used daily.

My problem is that my Family Tree Maker software, my Creative Memories photo organization and repair programs, Rosetta Stone, and several other programs, with all their associated files, were only on the laptop. Fortunately, I have backups that were from only two or three days before the crash, and the hard drive was salvaged (they say everything is fine on the drive, but I haven’t checked it yet), so the only big problems are the expense of the new machine, the reloading of several programs and then getting the data back into the proper places, and the time to do all of that (plus I am almost illiterate when it comes to doing that sort of thing, so I’ll be taking my time with it). I hope to soon be up and running like normal.

Every cloud has its silver lining, though, so they say. While I’m deciding on my new machine I have been working hard on my photo project (the one I mentioned in the last article). The slides are almost to a point where I can pick up that project again in the fall without difficulty, and I have added almost 3,000 negatives to my negative files, while getting them organized with their corresponding prints.

What I do there is put a piece of archival tape on the back of the print, and then put the number of the negative in the lower right corner of the tape (I do that in pencil because ink can bleed, and I do it on a hard surface so I don’t "dent" the picture). The number shows me where the negative is stored (negative sheet number and position on the sheet). That way, if I need to make copies of a particular print I can find the negative in about a minute.

The negative sheets are archival quality so the negatives are well-protected. I’ve been told that the worst place to store your negatives is in the envelope that comes from the processor. I also write the information for the photo on the tape (who is in the picture, the date, the circumstances, or anything else that will help identify the photo if someone picks it up).

Of course, with today’s digital cameras we don’t have the "problem" of negatives. I’m still old-school about that, though. I take digital photos but I still prefer negatives and prints. For one thing, with a negative and a print I have the photo in two places. If I have only digital, and forget to save to another place, the photo is only on my camera, or on my hard drive. I know several people who have lost hundreds, or even thousands of photos because they were on a hard drive that wasn’t properly backed up before it crashed. I like being able to store the negatives somewhere else, too. It is much safer. Plus, with the negatives stored safely away I can always get a "fresh" copy if I need it.

Anyway, back down off the soap box of digital vs. film photography. It looks like the silver lining with my laptop’s untimely death is that I can get some more of those projects done before spring really hits and I’m outside doing genealogy with relatives, or at the cemetery. As I asked in the last article, do you have projects that you should finish before it gets nice outside? Get them done if you can, and don’t forget to back up what you have on your computer–it makes a huge problem into a little one if you don’t have to try to figure out what was lost, especially if it can’t be recovered.

Jim Moses is a genealogy buff living in Lansing. Write to him at the Sentinel-Standard, 114 N. Depot St., Ionia, MI 48846 or email jmosesgen@gmail.com.